“No,” I said to Marcus. “We don’t have any options. Either we do it or we don’t.”

“I vote that we don’t,” he said. He shared a small couch with his girlfriend, Eli. More like she was wrapped around him like a boa constrictor.Ricardo stared blankly at the wall and Sam was still at work. Good thing too, as I didn’t want her to “smooth out” any ruffled feathers with her powers.

“This is not a democracy Marcus.”

“The hell it ain’t!” he moved to get up, but that would have thrown Eli to the floor. So he squirmed instead.

“No it is not,” I stared him down, “what the hell happened to you, the cop, the would be Guardian. Did those soldiers beat the ‘I care about other people as much as myself’ gene out of you?”

“That’s not fair!” said Eli.

“Live with it,” I said. The temperature in the room shot up. Marcus lay a reassuring hand on her thigh. The temperature cooled back to what the pitiful excuse for an AC could muster. “I don’t like it, but we have enough enemies without adding more to the list. If what Shaw told me is true, and I have a sickening feeling that it is, we got to do something about. The alternatives–”

“Sucks ass,” said Ricardo.

“Yeah.”

“Fine. How about work,” said Marcus.

“Will deal with it. We stashed enough cash just in case, but that won’t last long. We might have to do a few more jobs for Slick,” Eli’s eyes grew wide. “Yeah, I know, risky, but just in case. Anyway, that’s where we are at, and as soon as I talk to Sam, will get started.”

“Fine, I’m in, but Eli out of this,” said Marcus.

“Oh no! We are in this together. You left me once, you’re not going to leave me again. Is that understood?” she said. He shrunk under her intense gaze and threw up his hands.

“Okay, talk to you tomorrow,” I said. The lovebirds left, but Ricardo stayed behind, still staring at the same piece of wall as before.

“What’s Ricardo?”

“Nothing much, just the meds kicking in,” he said.

“What meds?”

” For my bi-polar thing. A symptom of being a necromancer, I guess,” he shuffled past me. “You about the pact right?”

“Sort off,” I said.

“Well, some spirits want money, blood, a sacrifice of some sort, proof that you’re ready to deal. A trust building exercise of sorts,” he said. “Most of the them want information. A variation of ‘I think therefore I am’. I give them something, they give me something and from that you build a relationship and they perform favors. But in order to show that I’m on the level, I have to accept whatever they tell as truth, no matter how bizarre or fantastic it may be. And there is not more certain truth than death. Too many of those spirits have told me when, where and how I m going to die. And I accepted it. The thing is, you can’t really know, until it happens, and by that time it’s too late. Stuff like that screws up your mind. Guaranteed.”

“If you want to bow out….”

He looked at me with dead eyes, “Nah, I’m in it for the long haul boss. I ain’t crazy, I’m just….broken.”